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And piling -ToHit on the enemies accomplishes the same result as using Defense to hit the soft cap. The very purpose of adding that diminishing return on Defense would be sidestepped entirely by debuffing powers, create a massive disparity between buffs and debuffs and skew player choice toward debuffs. Not. Balanced.

Power sets aren't designed to be identical copies of one another, or to meet anyone's specified gaming expectations, they're designed around themes. What would be the thematic method for, say, Claws to teleport? What about Staff? How, exactly, does a Broadsword or Axe or having one's body covered in Thorns/Spines cause the wielder to appear in the middle of a spawn 60' away? Outline the powers you'd like to see created, how they should function and how they fit within the sets, then put them on the table as replacements, and have better reasons for replacing powers than "I don't want to use a pool power to do this" or "Other games are doing it, why don't we?", and you'll have a proposal worthy of further discussion.

Then it wouldn't be balanced. Return to square one.

Sit on it, Potsie.

The original Super Stunner.

What about... a static debuff resistance applied to teammates? X% non-scaling resistance to -Regeneration, -Endurance, -Recovery, -Rchg/Spd, -ToHit and -Perception for team members within 35', in concert with scaling Status Resistance applied to the defender him/herself. Thematic, team-oriented, still useful solo, applicable at all levels and not creepy since it's not improving sets or powers.

I can't believe how badly I fucked up the math here. I mean, woooooooow. How did I miss that? Why didn't any of you catch that? Am I the only nerd in the room? I just finished calculating the precise +Def/-ToHit numbers required to floor enemy hit chances for all minions through AVs, +0 through +4, in non-Incarnate, non-hard mode content. These are presuming that AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters, which con as +5, aren't actually receiving 5 ranks of extra Accuracy mods or ToHit bonuses (haven't looked into that yet, will get around to it eventually). And with -ToHit, bear in mind that the purple patch reduces their efficiency, so you'd need more -ToHit to compensate. These are just the target numbers to floor enemy hit chances (5%). +0 minions - 45% +0 lieutenants - 45.65% +0 bosses - 46.15% +0 AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters - 46.67% +1 minions - 45.45% +1 lieutenants - 46.05% +1 bosses - 46.50% +1 AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters - 46.97% +2 minions - 45.83% +2 lieutenants - 46.38% +2 bosses - 46.80% +2 AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters - 47.22% +3 minions - 46.15% +3 lieutenants - 46.66% +3 bosses - 47.04% +3 AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters - 47.44% +4 minions - 46.43% +4 lieutenants - 46.89% +4 bosses - 47.25% +4 AVs/Heroes/GMs/Monsters - 47.62% When I started doing the math, it was for an entirely different reason, personal curiosity (well, that, and because i just spent three days troubleshooting a problem with my bike, cleaning the carburetor, then replacing the carburetor, then going over all of the fuel and vacuum lines twice, replacing the spark plug, checking compression, adjusting the valves, taking apart and putting the damn thing over and over and over again and getting no results, and finally noticing fuel in the airbox drain and realizing it was misfiring, likely due to a failing CDI... and needed to do something to relax). Everyone talks about 45% like it's a clamped number, but I know it isn't and I was interested in figuring out what the real numbers (plural, because, as can be seen above, it varies by rank and level) were. In the process of calculating those numbers, I realized I'd horribly misrepresented the results I posted here. @PeregrineFalcon, you were right. You were absolutely right. Your FF/Beam defender, presuming Maneuvers is in the mix, is already nearly soft-capping your entire team versus everything. Even a 10% +/-Special would take you right over the hit cap versus +4s. On the one hand, you can already do that if you also use Grant Invisibility, or if we presume that all of your teammates have at least one power granting a small amount of +Def, or a single Steadfast Protection Res/+Def (All) or Gladiator's Armor +Def (All), or even a very few easily acquired set bonuses. Or, hell, a single character using any kind of -ToHit AoE. My Dark/Martial dominator is almost soft-capped against +4 foes with one use of Fearsome Stare. That's the game today, and a defender offering a few percent +Def probably wouldn't even be notable. And on the other hand, it is overpowered. It's power creep. But the power creep/overpowering potential isn't what I see as the worst problem. It's that you're already there anyway with a couple of pool powers and/or teammates with little more than CJ or Hover, so this doesn't improve the experience for you outside of end game content. And it's just a single example with a single primary, a primary coupled with a secondary with no damage mitigation debuffs. If it's like this, overpowered and, oddly, underwhelming at the same time, with FF/Beam, it's going to be just as bad with most, if not all, in one way or another. I was wrong. I didn't take the time to do the math in the first place, and I didn't double-check the math when I got around to doing the equations. I was wrong and I apologize. Having gone back and reviewed the correct numbers, +/-Special would not be an advisable addition to Vigilance.

*/Willpower brute or scrapper, or Willpower/* tank. /Willpower won't overwhelm him with distractions. Select a simple primary or secondary, nothing with combos or anything like Follow Up. He doesn't need three trays of powers to figure out what to do with, just an easy way to survive and deal damage. Once he has a handle on that, he can expand to more complex builds. For a beginner, KISS.

Also... HA HA, YOU DON'T ADD SAGE OR FENNEL SEED TO YOUR SPICE MIX! SAUSAGE NOOB!

He said "no links", make fun of his sausage!

That approach would be possible. Check damage type, activate relevant heal which is baked into the Regeneration powers (as opposed to adding a Regen-only HoT to all attacks in the game). Wouldn't even be difficult to implement, just grab the SW code and tweak it. The "-19.5748 points of Special damage (all affected targets) after 10s" function is the relevant bit. The time before activation would have to be altered to pull its information from the character's current regeneration rate, and the amount of damage healed would also have to be matched to an equivalent HP tick if it's intended to mimic regeneration, but it would actually be relatively simple to implement. Since it's simply adding HP back via the Special Damage mechanic, it wouldn't require specific typed damage in the heal, only for checking damage type to determine whether to activate the heal. Yeah, that's totally doable, and wouldn't impact any non-Regeneration characters in any way. It might need some numerical jiggering or a check for external regeneration buffs to ensure it wasn't completely over the top, but that's just tweaking. ⭐

The method of power acquisition doesn't matter, the engine just doesn't currently support the basic idea. After the damage is removed from health, it's not typed any more, it's just less health. The engine doesn't record the types of damage taken between HP ticks (it records damage taken, but not type, as lost HP), sort and categorize the typed damage for future reference (no code for that, though buff/debuff code might be adaptable), or check for and apply specific Regeneration buffs to each damage type (doesn't currently exist). And it may not be capable of doing all of that before the next HP tick (base 12s, cap varies by archetype, but scrappers and stalkers have the highest cap, 3000%, which is a tick every 0.4s) when latency and Arcanatime are taken into account, which would require more redesign to speed up the storing, sorting, calculating and application of the New and Improved Regeneration. And even if they put the time into trying to make it work, they'd have to segregate Regeneration's specific typed regen from Health's regen, set bonus regen, Regeneration Aura's regen, and so on, just to keep Regeneration's rework from deleteriously impacting every character, which would leave Regeneration... well, kind of fucked in teams, since it wouldn't be receiving new Regeneration buffs, only regeneration buffs. Or it would impact every character, which would open up some serious holes in a lot of characters' survivability. Either way, it's more problems and headaches, more months of redesign and testing, more wrinkles to hammer flat. There's "difficult, but possible", and then there's "Maybe next game". I'm reasonably certain that this is the latter.

Also, that's not how damage types function. You can't regenerate only Lethal, or only Toxic, because you're not regenerating damage, you're regenerating HP and HP has no type distinctions. Once the damage is dealt, it's not Lethal or Toxic damage any more, it's just HP removed. It might be possible to create HP type distinctions, but it'd be a load of work, two loads of testing and probably a couple of years at the earliest before it could begin beta testing.

So, just be perfect, and only play with other perfect people, or quit every team/SG until you find one with perfect teammates, and it's a great inherent. Yeah... now it's even less attractive to me than it was on initial review.

That's stupid. There isn't even an F in incorrectly.

There we go. Now I have matching earrings.

That sounds like a punishment for other peoples' behavior (melee characters running off in different directions, soloing spawns and taking damage; ranged characters pulling spawns to the team before the current fight is over; everyone rushing ahead and expecting the defender to buff/debuff later; difficulty cranked up to the max when the team isn't capable of handling it; etc). Encouraging defenders to micro-manage other players actions, decisions and choices so they don't lose their Damage buff might not be the direction in which we want to go.